The only two internet data plans that you need in Lagos

If you are resident in the city of Lagos, you know the hustle for internet is real. You know how you have had to jump and switch from one service provider to another depending on whether it is rainy or dry season. Sometimes, you have four (4) active data plans, so you have backup and backup backup. Well, something like that.

I have good news for the average user (I hope you noticed the text in bold): you need only two (2) internet data plans for ALL of your internet needs. Whatever your need, keeping a combination of these two means you are covered. Stay with me.

Visafone BIS Visafone BlackBerry Internet Service costs just N1,000 monthly, but gives you 10 TB of data to use as you wish for 30 days. Honest. Browse. Stream media. Download. Update. Chat. Whatever. It is all yours. The beautiful thing is that you can share the connection via Wireless Hotspot or Bluetooth tethering.

The downside is that it isn’t exactly fast. But even YouTube works (sometimes with buffering). Get Visafone BIS for your non-critical internet tasks and forget about expensive internet. If you are a student or young worker on a budget, Visafone BIS is the answer.

I have two youngsters. They both have smartphones. You know how kids download everything. It is Visafone BIS that saved me from bankruptcy and shame. Now, they are free to download as many games, music tracks and videos as they want. Between them, Mrs Mo and my humble self, the 10TB Visafone BIS data has never been finished yet. They are happy (as a matter of fact, I have become the best father in the world). My pocket is happy. Everyone is happy.

Smile 4G Now, if you also sometimes have a need for much faster internet, the provider to embrace is Smile 4G. It is available in Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and Port Harcourt for now, but Smile say they will have the country covered by end of December 2015. Now, Smile is fast. Blazing fast. It is the fastest wireless internet service in Nigeria that I have experienced. But it is also relatively expensive. So, reserve it for when you have to carry out heavy, work-related tasks. There is a trick to Smile 4G.

Subscribe to the 10GB plan (N9,000) initially, and after you have exhausted it, you can use it pay-as-you-use at the rate of 1GB for N900. That means, you can subsequently top up your line with smaller amounts of money as you need it and keep browsing at that low rate. So, as an example, you can budget N3,000 monthly for your Smile data. It is brilliant.

Now, my Smile 4G internet can be active and instantly deployed during those times that I need blazing fast internet. Should I need more data, it is just a top up away.

Conclusions If you do not have any mission critical work and do not need super speed internet, and if you are on a budget, Visafone BIS is what you need. If you want to maintain two connections and have one capable of lifting the heavy stuff, add a Smile 4G subscription to it. But between these two, you are covered.

the visafone plan is very slow in my neck of the woods, which is surprising because visafone USB modems are pretty fast here, maybe it’s a H+ thing. the smile plan is too expensive, i get twice the data for about the same amount, not as fast but fast enough

You didn’t mention Spectranet. They have the 30gb of data attached to purchase of their mifi device for a sum of 16k. The mifi device’ battery lasts for about 6hours. Subsequent subscription plans are equally affordable.

My only gripe with visafone is the speed. Glo has taught me a valuable lesson “slow Internet speed results in greater hair loss”

Spectranet and swift started off okay and fast but now, it seems they are just ranting all around town. Their speeds are embarrassing and you wonder how many modems you have to purchase to have decent life on the internet through your PC.

My swift suddenly stopped working… pc would’t connect to it. And before that, speed was epileptic. A friend bought spectranet and I borrowed it to test speed and honestly, swift is the twin brother.

I think Smile would be my next ISP anyway because the last time I checked, it was still blazing fast. And that was even with a MiFi device, which is usually even slower than main Router.

I don’t have all that money to test or waste on data.. I browse on Etisalat (free) but too slow… On MTN bis 70/100 NGN fast in my area, maximum of 5GB in 24 hrs.. I know this blog don’t support free or cheat browsing, But i can’t count 9k for 10gb now. The time i have done it has passed… I have spent too much on data that frustrate me…

Smile is blazing fast. It’s my main data source, but I had a funny experience with smile.

I tried to download a pdf editor (phantom pdf) which is slightly over 300MB. Each time the download reaches 99%, it will stop downloading, whether on PC on through my phone, whether I’m using a download manager or not. I wasted so much data over several weeks doing this until one day, I decided to pause the download at 99% and then switched to Glo and resumed the download , to my horror and surprise, the download went to completion.

Similarly, I had wasted up to 20GB of smile data trying to update from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, through both windows update and Windows media download tool. Each time it hangs and finally aborts at around 30% until I finally used the same tactics I used for phantom pdf (using glo to overcome the kinks in smile (it turns out there were several of them along the way).

I went on the Smile website to see what coverage is like in my area. Well if that green cloud is anything to go by, it stops long before it gets to my area, then it just looks like a misty cloud on a hot day.